Anti-Donald Trump Forces See Convention Coup as Within Reach
Months after Donald Trump appeared to seal the Republican nomination for president, anti-Trump forces are making one last push to force a vote on the party’s convention floor that would throw open the GOP contest again.
It’s a long shot, but by some counts they are remarkably close to getting past the first hurdle next week in Cleveland.
Mr. Trump’s intraparty foes, led by a group of rogue delegates, are waging an intense behind-the-scenes effort to push the Republican National Convention’s Rules Committee for a vote on freeing delegates to back whomever they wish, rather than being bound to Mr. Trump.
The presumptive nominee’s team is fighting back just as vehemently, with an organized campaign of dozens of aides and volunteers. It’s a power struggle that has prompted threats of reprisals and left many Republicans anxious that it could hurt the party’s prospects in November.
The anti-Trump camp needs the backing of 28, or one-quarter, of 112 Convention Rules Committee members to place the issue before the full convention. A Wall Street Journal survey suggests it could be close.
In interviews, 20 members said they are willing to consider allowing delegates to be unbound, while 59 support Mr. Trump. The other 33 panelists couldn’t be reached or didn’t respond to repeated messages.
Others counting votes have their own tallies. Internal surveys of the Rules Committee conducted by RNC member Randy Evans of Georgia, who is trying to help Mr. Trump fend off the insurrection, found at least 18 committee members open to voting to unbind. The Trump campaign’s count shows about 15 leaning toward unbinding, according to people familiar with the campaign.
Kendal Unruh, a Colorado teacher on the committee leading part of the anti-Trump movement, said she has private commitments from more than 30 committee members, but that many aren’t willing to admit so publicly.
All involved in counting votes say those numbers fluctuate day-to-day. If the provision gets the necessary committee votes when the panel meets beginning next Wednesday, it would place the issue before the convention, where it would need 1,237 votes—half the delegates—to pass.
Though a majority of the convention delegates are bound to support Mr. Trump, Mr. Evans’s count shows just about 890 delegates are personally loyal to the New Yorker. Another 680 oppose Mr. Trump. That leaves 900 delegates who are presumed to be “in play,” he said. The stop-Trump forces would have to take nearly two-thirds of them to block his nomination.
A Trump campaign official described Mr. Evans’s figures as “wildly inaccurate” and said Mr. Trump would win any floor vote at the convention.
Pushing the measure to the floor would create chaos, with the party delegates fighting over a nomination long viewed as settled in full display of the international news media. With such enormous stakes, members of the committee, including Graham Hunt, an insurance salesman from Orting, Wash., are the focus of a heated behind-the-scenes lobbying effort from both camps.
“It’s intensifying,” Mr. Hunt said one recent day at 9:30 a.m. “I have 83 emails already today.” On average, he gets more than 200 emails a day from unbinding proponents along with several daily phone calls from Mr. Trump’s campaign staff.
Mr. Trump, who for nearly a year ignored the nuts and bolts of securing delegate slots, realized such a fight was brewing in March when The Wall Street Journal reported he garnered fewer delegates in Louisiana than primary rival Ted Cruz, even though Mr. Trump won more of the state’s votes. He hired longtime Republican operative Paul Manafort, who led President Gerald Ford’s whip operation in 1976.
Mr. Trump is confident he will prevail.
wsj.com |
